When are you going fully electric?

[Freefaller]

I think one of the other challenge is for high density housing and on-street parking.

Also, plant and machinery - a 20T excavator can't run on batteries if you want to maintain productivity. You'd need 4+ of them to do 1 job that a diesel powered excavator could do (since they'd need to be charged and thus losing productivity). As such you need 4x more batteries and more steel to create the same productivity for construction. I'm using construction as an example since they use thousands of trucks, and plant daily - they are almost more significant than commuters.

If sustainability is the main aim, car pooling, and reducing single occupancy cars is far more effective - as well as mass transit systems.

Also the recycling of electric cars becomes problematic - I wonder if a 10 year old eV would still run as well as a 150,000 mile diesel car? We don't have that data at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti electric as I say, I do think it is a mild distraction (but a positive one) of the bigger picture. None of these changes will happen over night - 30 years from now I'd be surprised if even a 1/10th of the vehicles are all electric. That said, I'd be delighted to be wrong.

 

[SDK^]

I wonder if a 10 year old eV would still run as well as a 150,000 mile diesel car? We don't have that data at the moment.

There are many Tesla Model S's with 300k+ miles with no issues - just lost around 10-20% of range.

 

[Freefaller]

There are many Tesla Model S's with 300k+ miles with no issues - just lost around 10-20% of range.

Without replacing the battery? Ok I'll stand down from that comment then - that is impressive.

 

[Journey]

Also the recycling of electric cars becomes problematic - I wonder if a 10 year old eV would still run as well as a 150,000 mile diesel car? We don't have that data at the moment.

It's way less problematic than recycling current ICE cars, as there are far fewer components, and of those components most of them have never been in contact with potentially hazardous chemicals that are polluting to the environment.
Every part of a modern EV battery can be reused it recycled, this can't be said of any liquid it gas fuel, I've it is burnt it is gone.

As for longevity, there are Tesla's out there with 300K+ Km on them running just fine, albeit it a bit less range and a reduced charging curve.

It seems to me you've actually done very little in the way of research, and have only made a cursory glance at a newspaper headline or equivalent, then started a conversation, which is a really shame as you'll see in this thread a lot of these topics have be repeated again and again, and answer given.

 

[Freefaller]

It's way less problematic than recycling current ICE cars, as there are far fewer components, and of those components most of them have never been in contact with potentially hazardous chemicals that are polluting to the environment.
Every part of a modern EV battery can be reused it recycled, this can't be said of any liquid it gas fuel, I've it is burnt it is gone.

As for longevity, there are Tesla's out there with 300K+ Km on them running just fine, albeit it a bit less range and a reduced charging curve.

It seems to me you've actually done very little in the way of research, and have only made a cursory glance at a newspaper headline or equivalent, then started a conversation, which is a really shame as you'll see in this thread a lot of these topics have be repeated again and again, and answer given.

Assume whatever you want

Thanks for the reply though. Always good to diversify your own thoughts with other people's opinions.

I barely post on the forums, I take a passing interest, posted, because this is what a forum is about, I've got some interesting thoughts to take away.

I'm not going to read multiple pages just to see if the same question is asked. Opinions change as well.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Construction is an interesting one, the ease of electrifying plat and machinery is highly dependent on where it’s being deployed.

Constructing a road in the middle of nowhere, yeh I get that could be pretty difficult with a BEV. But a housing estate would be very easy as they are right next to decent grid connections, machinery doesn’t need to drivel far and can be plugged in to trickle charge when the site is closed (basically from 7pm to 7am).

JCB and others have have a few electric diggers now and I seem to remember they were advertised as have all day battery life and uniquely, they can also be operated indoors unlike their ICE siblings. One of its other selling points is greatly increased service intervals so it can stay on site longer.

I also remember reading about a huge truck in a mine that’s been electrified and it’s actually a net contributor to the grid. All of the material it moves is at the top of a big hill, it goes up empty, loads and then is on full regen on the way down. It generates more electricity coming down than it uses going up, they have to plug it in and dump its power to the grid. They estimated it would literally pay for itself from selling all the electric.

 

[Journey]

I'm not going to read multiple pages just to see if the same question is asked

Your choice, but there's a great amount of useful information and articles, videos etc. as more and more people choose or become interested in BEV's

An interesting fact posted a couple of pages back, in September this year there were as many BEV's registered as there was for the entire year in 2016, and September was the first month where plug-in cars exceeded 15% of new registrations in the UK. The upward trend will continue and it won't be many years before we hit 50%.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Norway is at 90% of new car sales being plug in now. Of that over 70% is full BEV and 19.2 is PHEV.

The rest is made up by
4.4% plugless hybrid, 2.6% diesel and 3.7% petrol.

 

[Freefaller]

Construction is an interesting one, the ease of electrifying plat and machinery is highly dependent on where it’s being deployed.

Constructing a road in the middle of nowhere, yeh I get that could be pretty difficult with a BEV. But a housing estate would be very easy as they are right next to decent grid connections, machinery doesn’t need to drivel far and can be plugged in to trickle charge when the site is closed (basically from 7pm to 7am).

JCB and others have have a few electric diggers now and I seem to remember they were advertised as have all day battery life and uniquely, they can also be operated indoors unlike their ICE siblings. One of its other selling points is greatly increased service intervals so it can stay on site longer.

I also remember reading about a huge truck in a mine that’s been electrified and it’s actually a net contributor to the grid. All of the material it moves is at the top of a big hill, it goes up empty, loads and then is on full regen on the way down. It generates more electricity coming down than it uses going up, they have to plug it in and dump its power to the grid. They estimated it would literally pay for itself from selling all the electric.

Problem is when it's charging you're not being productive - productivity is a key issue in construction - but that said, it could be tethered rather than being battery powered so it is an interesting question to explore.

There are large mining trucks that are electric and are tethered so a different take on electric, but interesting alternative.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Problem is when it's charging you're not being productive - productivity is a key issue in construction - but that said, it could be tethered rather than being battery powered so it is an interesting question to explore.

There are large mining trucks that are electric and are tethered so a different take on electric, but interesting alternative.

The point I was making is few construction sites operate 24/7, it’s normally too dangerous to operate at night. The plant being bought to market has all day battery life so there isn’t any loss of productivity nor is there any need to tether it, it’s just plugged in when not in use.

 

[Freefaller]

The point I was making is few construction sites operate 24/7, it’s normally too dangerous to operate at night. The plant being bought to market has all day battery life so there isn’t any loss of productivity nor is there any need to tether it, it’s just plugged in when not in use.

It very much depends. However I can tell you that several £100m+ is being ploughed into this space for the construction industry. So it's going to be an interesting challenge!

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Being realistic, the vast majority of the of the emissions attributed to the construction industry comes from the production of concrete and other building materials. I’d honestly expect plant and machinery to be negligible in the grant scheme of things.

There isn’t a planned end date for ICE plant yet anyway is there? I’d expect the early adopters will be doing so for economic reasons because they are a lot cheaper to run above anything else.

 

[Freefaller]

Being realistic, the vast majority of the of the emissions attributed to the construction industry comes from the production of concrete and other building materials. I’d honestly expect plant and machinery to be negligible in the grant scheme of things.

There isn’t a planned end date for ICE plant yet anyway is there? I’d expect the early adopters will be doing so for economic reasons because they are a lot cheaper to run above anything else.

Yep if concrete (cement to be precise) was a country, it would rate as 4th in teh world for CO2 emission.

There is - 78% of diesel plant to eliminated from construction sites by 2035 is the target.

 

[alchal]

I think one of the other challenge is for high density housing and on-street parking.

Also, plant and machinery - a 20T excavator can't run on batteries if you want to maintain productivity. You'd need 4+ of them to do 1 job that a diesel powered excavator could do (since they'd need to be charged and thus losing productivity). As such you need 4x more batteries and more steel to create the same productivity for construction. I'm using construction as an example since they use thousands of trucks, and plant daily - they are almost more significant than commuters.

If sustainability is the main aim, car pooling, and reducing single occupancy cars is far more effective - as well as mass transit systems.

Also the recycling of electric cars becomes problematic - I wonder if a 10 year old eV would still run as well as a 150,000 mile diesel car? We don't have that data at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti electric as I say, I do think it is a mild distraction (but a positive one) of the bigger picture. None of these changes will happen over night - 30 years from now I'd be surprised if even a 1/10th of the vehicles are all electric. That said, I'd be delighted to be wrong.

JCB is going for hydrogen power as the future for heavy machinery.

 

[Freefaller]

JCB is going for hydrogen power as the future for heavy machinery.

CAT are as well as a lot of other big manufcaturers - they feel it will be the most sensible option for this industry. A long way to go yet. But exciting for sure!

 

[jpaul]

JCB ingratiated itself in future UK hydrogen distribution chain - so we'll have JCB brand garages
I suppose BMW and the likes dedicated ev chassis (following iX) will be compatible with either fuel cells or batteries, but batteries are flat and fuel cell will have to be in boot, or under bonnet.

 

[nsmalley]

Hydrogen is the perfect fuel for heavy transport. It’s very energy dense so it will replace the battery for this sector. I.e you don’t need a 2+ ton battery to make it work.
Once Hydroden production becomes cheaper and greener (as a country we still have to meet net zero targets) then tankers, ships etc will naturally move to hydrogen as the fuel source. Which then means it’s less polluting (cleaner) to move hydrogen around.

The thing is.. How do you get it from the Hydrogen refinery to said machines? It doesn't just automagically appear inside the tank of the digger,lorry etc. Yes I know it sounds obvious but making the fuel is only part of the story. You *have* to factor in how it gets from one place to the other and then to the place where it's going to be used. and the impact of such. At the moment, the only way to do that for H2 is if you have fossil fuels doing the transporting.

In some ways I think the H2 "camp" is stuck into fossil fuel, needing to go somewhere special to put range in mindset. Not saying EV is the full answer, but end to end it is still much cleaner (and in some ways more convenient) than H2 blue or otherwise.

 

[SDK^]

The thing is.. How do you get it from the Hydrogen refinery to said machines? It doesn't just automagically appear inside the tank of the digger,lorry etc. Yes I know it sounds obvious but making the fuel is only part of the story. You *have* to factor in how it gets from one place to the other and then to the place where it's going to be used. and the impact of such. At the moment, the only way to do that for H2 is if you have fossil fuels doing the transporting.

In some ways I think the H2 "camp" is stuck into fossil fuel, needing to go somewhere special to put range in mindset. Not saying EV is the full answer, but end to end it is still much cleaner (and in some ways more convenient) than H2 blue or otherwise.

I wasn’t talking about right now, but in 6-8 years when hydrogen generation and fuel system is more mature.
Hydrogen will be moved around by hydrogen powered trucks.

[This answer was already in my post your quoted]

In some ways people are not thinking about what is coming and stuck in the mindset of ‘it’s not possible now, so it never will be’

 

[nsmalley]

I wasn’t talking about right now, but in 6-8 years when hydrogen generation and fuel system is more mature.
Hydrogen will be moved around by hydrogen-powered trucks.

[This answer was already in my post your quoted]

Yeah. I saw that part, TY. You aint going to get ships etc running on H2 without the infrastructure world wide in place to do it and tbh I'd love to see it.. But if the EV charging network won't be ready in 6-8 then alas the H2 network has no chance within that time. The only chance I think it is are basically H2 fuel stored inside solid disks which can then be inserted into an engine, which then release the H2. I forget the tech, but it's working in prototype form

 

[SDK^]

Yeah. I saw that part, TY. You aint going to get ships etc running on H2 without the infrastructure world wide in place to do it and tbh I'd love to see it.. But if the EV charging network won't be ready in 6-8 then alas the H2 network has no chance within that time.

It doesn’t need to go from nothing to ‘ready’ - progression will be slow and not overnight and for sure the transition will take time. Everything new always does.

There is already a Ferry operating and running on hydrogen in the UK.

Also, hydrogen can be transported through gas pipelines which already exist.